A Shuttle, a Hovertruck, and Plush Tractor by Yseult and Volanta
PART I: Survivor By Yseult 16th of December 3000. The woman was falling, falling. She tried to recollect her senses, to put order to the chaos around her: seconds before, she was sitting in that shuttle, and suddenly. A flash of light. An explosion. Light, heat and screams. People around her shouting, the terrible noise of the shuttle breaking apart. A crew member shoving her into the emergency exit, her hand trying to grab his hand to take him in the escape pod, and that hand falling back in the fire. She tried to close better the pod’s door - the heat had somehow melted the mechanism, loosing precious oxygen while they were falling. Falling, falling, into darkness, silence and cold. She put her hands on her belly-where her baby was kicking furiously. Oh God, please, not him, please, save him, save him. No tears, no panic - I have to save my breath for my baby. Oh God, please, not him, please, save him, save him. She lost consciousness just before the escape pod reached Luna’s thin atmosphere, the impact with the surface was brutal. Walter "Wally" Mortimer saw a strange lightning - some meteorite falling, maybe? He drove there as quickly as his old farm hovertruck allowed him to, muttering under his breath that that thing’s rather not light his crops on fire. When he looked up, the farmer saw the hole that had been made in the protective dome overhead, forcefield in place to prevent depressurization. When he arrived, he found a few metal scraps, a door and diverse parts from an escape pod, still burning from the fall. And, at a good distance, an obviously pregnant human woman, unconscious and bleeding. /// Six months later.. The rusty hovertruck was once more dangling down the road that was joining Walter and Maureen’s farm to the rest of the planet, on that sunny June afternoon. Nearest civilization: Corral Creek, and its hospital. For three months, the stranger of the crash had staid there, in a coma. Wally and Mo came twice weekly visit that girl who was nothing to them. Did they see in her the daughter they had wished so much, after 7 boys who were all grown-ups now, with families and kids, but so far away from the little farm? Was it curiosity, boredom? Or just plain charity? God only knows; but the old couple visited her, paid the bills, and didn’t spare anything to help. They even gave her a name, which came spontaneously on both lips: Roxanne. When Roxanne got out of her coma, she had lost her memories. Who was she? Where was she from? After a few weeks of treatments, she could again walk, speak, laugh. She gave birth to her baby at full term, a perfectly healthy girl that she named Grace Anastasia. The burns on her arms were the only outside reminders of her ordeal; but inside, the scar was much deeper. Wally and Mo took Roxanne with them, at the farm. There, she spent her days cooking, giving Mo a hand for the housekeeping, taking long walks in the fields with Gracie on her back. The only time Roxanne helped Wally in the fields had been a total disaster; he’d taken her home at noon, laughing and telling her "I dunno where ya grew up, kid, but for shuh’, that weren’t in them fields!" During the night, Roxanne was regularly waken by nightmares - that she just couldn’t remember, finding herself seated on her bed, sweating, screaming, little Gracie crying in her crib. Step by step, she managed to catch the most recurring dreams. Sometimes, it was just about walking on the beach with a little boy, redhead like her, that she was calling Erwann. Sometimes, it was like a huge amphitheater, the rotten smell of a body set up for dissection. From that, and a few other dreams, Roxanne begun to draw a rough sketch of her former life: she was a M.D, that was one of her first assumptions. Erwann, she supposed, was her brother. Her wedding ring testified that she had a husband, maybe even a family, waiting for her somewhere. Her following visits to the hospital didn’t give more light about her identity, but confirmed the assumption that she had had a medical training. Testing her reflexes also revealed that she was a pretty good bare-hands fighter, using a mixture of martial arts spontaneously, apparently well trained. But where had she learned that? It was still a mystery. Other dreams came up. Tropical lagoons, a boathouse. Where could that have been? Another dream helped identify the place: she was in an hospital, wearing a lab-coat, and suddenly lots of noise, and the ground shaking like in a bombardment. And that thought: ‘Oh no, the Castori are attacking us!’ Even if the Mortimers didn’t have an holovid, merely listening to the news on radio, it was easy to know where that took place: Enaj’s attack by mysterious Castori ships, on Sivad, was fairly recent. There was her main nightmare, too; but that one, she didn’t dare speak of it. It seemed so weird, so. Wrong, somehow. In the dream, she was in an elevator with a patient, an old man lying on a gurney; but the old man morphed into something monstrous, with claws, tentacles. Roxanne saw herself taking a scalpel. And stabbing the Thing with it, only to wake up in her own bed, kicking around furiously, crying. No, it was too bizarre to be true. At least, now, she had enough pieces to try to find her identity: Enaj’s main hospital should provide a good starting point. So, on that sunny day of June, Mo and Wally took her a last time to Corral Creek’s hospital; final check-up, that for the physical part, was completely positive. ‘You’re fine, now; put again in situation, your memories should come back.’ Confirmed the doctor. So, they drove to Luna City. Roxanne decided to leave Gracie to Wally and Mo’s keeping. ‘I’d like to take her, but if there’s any problem. If it takes me longer than expected, or anything. I’ll feel better knowing she’s safe with you both. I’ll call you next week, I promise.’ Her stomach was already in knots; with that strange idea things wouldn’t be as simple as she had hoped. ‘Don’t worry, hun’, I’m sure the wee one doesn’t mind staying a few days more with Mutti Mo and Grappi Wally. Take care!’ Maureen hugged her surprisingly strongly for such a short and old woman. ‘Thank you, Mo. Thanks for everything.' Wally took something out of his bag. ‘Here’s fo’ ya, for tha trip. ’ It was some money, and a music player with already two files in it. Roxanne kissed them goodbye, and walked away to the shuttle. Once in the shuttle for Sivad, when she listened to the music Wally had put in, she couldn’t help chuckling: The first one was that old Terran song, ‘Roxanne’. And the second one, she didn’t even know before: ‘Survivor.’ Yes, she was a survivor, keeping on surviving. She was a survivor, she was gonna make it. IC, Roxanne/Dr Elianor Freyssinet-Ritter will die exactly 48 hours later, June 26th 3001, indirectly at her husband’s hands, when Sovereign Bartholomew Ritter blows up his planet: La Terre. /// PART II: Reflection on a Second Death By Volanta 28th of July 3001. There’s nothing more out of place, Volanta thought, than a mute, unemployed, ex-interrogator Vollistan at a farm on the surface of Luna. He quirked a smile and pressed the signal button in front of him. At least I have my health, he then thought to himself. The door before him slid open shortly after to reveal the stern, almost cliched face of a farmer past his prime. He looked over the Light Singer in front of him for a moment, then licked his lips and just said, "What ya want?" Volanta sighed softly and held out a datapad to the man. The screen read: "My name is Volanta, I cannot speak. May I use telepathy?" He always felt so pathetic when he had to use it, made him feel like he was showing people the tag on his collar. If found, return to owner. It almost made Volanta want to return to Vollista, almost. "What’s this ‘a now?" The many mutters, squinting to read the datapad. He then looked up some three feet to the Vollistan’s throat. His eyes traced each of the four massive scars along his throat and over the crater where the Light Singer’s larynx was meant to me. Walter wasn’t impressed, he simply replied by saying, "Canno’ speak, ya sah? Fine, use yer damned mind whatcha hoo." ~Thank you, Mister Mortimer.~ Volanta answered politely, his lips never moving. ~I need to speak to you about a guest that had been staying here,~ he continued, ~though I’m afraid I don’t know her name.~ Walter Mortimer waited a moment, just to make sure Volanta was telling the truth, before stepping back into his house and motioning inside. "Mo!" He yelled into the house, "We got a visitor!" For the next four hours, Volanta would sit in the house of these strangers and tell them about the daughter that they’d been given by chance, and the daughter they’d lost at the hands of a madman, their son-in-law. Volanta saw the tears in their eyes as he continued without pause, explaining that their Roxanne wouldn’t return home. Maureen was overcome, screamed out, clutched at Volanta’s arm and pleaded with him. Before the Light Singer could reply, Walter picked her up from the floor and lead her into the bedroom to rest for a moment. He’d lost her before, right after Ming, and he’d be damned if he’d let it get to him again. Volanta folded his hands over his lap carefully and waited silently. Elianor had died once, now she just died again, so he felt nothing. She had gotten more lives than most. Besides, he hadn’t seen her since her return from the brink of death, so it wasn’t real. Still, the Light Singer’s mind wandered while he wallowed in his emotional stoicism. His eyes fell upon a small baby toy that was sitting on a bedside table. Elianor was pregnant when she’d died the first time. The baby would be born by now, unless the he was lost in the shuttle crash. The very existence of the toy told Volanta that he hadn’t been lost. He? Was it a boy or a girl? Volanta couldn’t remember. Silently, he hoped it was a girl. For a moment he was terrified that it’d be a boy, that he’d have his father’s eyes, his father’s horrible fashion sense, or his father’s lecherousness. Images flashed through the Vollistan’s mind of him ripping the child from Maureen’s arms and throwing him to the floor, feeling him beneath his foot as he stomped again and again. Volanta shook his head and looked upon the toy again, it was pink. He breathed a sigh of relief and sank a little in his chair, rubbing his eyes. Over the soft hum of the air filters, he could still hear Maureen Mortimer crying off in the bedroom. The Light Singer tried to remember the last time he cried. Was Ming it? Had she been the last time? Was Elianor the last time? Which happened first? He couldn’t remember this either, he felt ashamed. You’re a selfish bastard, this is supposed to be about Elianor and that little girl, Volanta thought to himself. He shook his head slowly, leaned back, and mouthed the words: "Elianor would’ve made a great mother." He imagined what it would’ve looked like for a moment; the little red headed girl bundled up in her mother’s arms as they sat by a warm fire, or on the porch in the afternoon sun. It was a nice image and it made the Light Singer smile. Taking pity on himself, he decided to enjoy the thought for a few more moments. He imagined Elianor bandaging a skinned knee, or kissing a bruised elbow. Volanta thought of what it would look like when she dressed the girl up for church, or for her first day of school, for her graduation, and finally for her wedding. Then, his smile faded as he remembered Elianor was dead. He pictured the girl weeping. Then, a few days later, they were at the reading of her will. A stiff man in a stiff suit reading from a stiff piece of paper. "And to her life-long friend Volanta, should he survive her, Elianor Freyssinet bequeaths parental rights to her child..." The man says, his voice fading into nothingness. Volanta shook his head quickly and frowned. He thought about it silently. I’m the only one left, so what. That doesn’t mean she’d give that girl to me. She’d let these people nice have it. They’d make better parents than me. Walter entered the room once more, jerking Volanta clear of his thoughts. He became aware of his luminescence once more, a faintly glimmering blue. He jerked the color back to green, hoping the Lunite wouldn’t notice. Walter first entered the kitchen nook and grabbed a beer, offering Volanta one in a quiet voice. The Light Singer replied with a simple shake of his head. He didn’t bother to explain that anything other than water hurt his throat. Walter popped the top off the bottle and walked back in, sitting opposite the Light Singer. All Walter said was: "What a shame that she’ll never know her mother." Volanta silently reached forward and took the small baby toy in his hands, a little pink tractor made entirely from plush cushions. After contemplating the toy for a moment, he looked over to Walter and asked, ~So what is her name?~ "Grace Anastasia." The farmer answered. The Light Singer nodded slowly. He could now finish his thought. The stiff man in the stiff suit adjusted his stiff papers for a moment. He looked over those who were assembled, then read clearly, "On this, the twenty-eight day of July, 3001, the re-deceased, Elianor Freyssinet, hereby bequeaths custody of her only living daughter, Grace Anastasia, to the Mortimer family, and to Mister Volanta, that the girl may always know who her mother was." Category:OtherSpace Stories